Leman Russ had returned. He was singed, his hair burnt back and eyebrows curled. His face was red from fire and lips chapped from cold. He was bloodied, his clothes tom. A weapon slit parted the fabric and leather covering his chest over his primary heart and his gear was drenched in blood. But it was him.

Without thinking, Bjorn made to look at his assailant. Russ grabbed his shoulder. 'Don't look behind you, remember?' he said. He reached past Bjorn and pulled out the Emperor's Spear.

'What was it?' said Bjorn.

'Best not to see,' said Russ, looking past him. 'It is a non-thing, a corrupt wight. One of those beings referred to as the Neverborn. A daemon.' He was thoughtful. 'A word we must learn to take seriously.'

'You used the Emperor's Spear.'

'I did!' said Russ. He smiled as he hefted it. A crust of black blood had formed on the blade, baked hard by the weapon's power field. 'For all its bad wyrd, it is a well-balanced weapon. That was a good throw.'

'It was.' Bjorn took in Russ' wounds.

'You are injured.'

'In the Underverse. Kva said there was a price.' Russ waved his concerns away. 'I paid it, and now I know how to hurt Horus.'

Russ did not say beat. Bjorn noted that well. There was something about the primarch that was different. Bjorn's eyes flicked over his face. He was behaving as he always did, brash, carefree, bold, but under his eyes were new, purplish smears, and he looked…. How did he look? thought Bjorn.

Haunted, that was the only word that fit how he looked.

'I found myself upon the steps. Where are the gothi?' asked Russ.

'They will not be joining us,' said Bjorn. 'They sleep on the red snow.'

'The manner of their death?'

'Heroic,' said Bjorn simply.

'We will go to them, and see what can be done to honour them in death,' said Russ.

'I cannot,' said Bjorn. 'It is forbidden.'

'Yes you can,' said Russ. 'Just keep your eyes closed.'

Russ led the way back down into the glen. Russ bound Bjorn's eyes over with a strip tom from his own shirt, and the primarch led him by the arm down the steps.

Russ could see Bjorn's assessment was correct as soon as the circle came in sight. The gothi were all dead. The stony ground was tom up as if ploughed, and drenched in blood. Strange weapons were strewn around, though there were no corpses except those of the dead Rune Priests. Some of them were battered beyond recognition, their ritual suits ripped open and flesh stamped into the churned earth. Something towards the end had flash-frozen the corpses.